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British premier seeks greater powers over internet

Speaking just outside 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister Theresa May called for international agreements to be introduced to regulate the internet in the light of the London Bridge terror attack. She said on Sunday that new rules for the internet should “deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online.” Moreover, she said that technology firms were not currently doing enough. “Things need to change,” she said.

May said that there is too much tolerance for extremism in the UK. “So, we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society.” She said about Islamist terrorism, “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed - yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide.” She said, “We need to work with allies democratic governments to reach international agreements to regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.”

She said that "pluralistic" British values and tolerance must be established as superior to Islamism. She said that there is "a new trend in the threat we face" and that while the three terrorist attacks in Britain over the last three months have not been linked to “common networks,” they are "bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamic extremism."

This is the first time May is thought to have made a public plea for international cooperation on further regulation of the internet. This would come on top of Britain’s Investigatory Powers Act 2016 – the so-called 'Snooper's Charter' – which allows greater freedoms to the British national security establishment. The Act was pushed by May and requires internet service providers to maintain a list of visited websites for all internet users for a year and gives intelligence agencies more powers to intercept online communications. Police can access the stored browsing history without any warrant or court order.